Week 10 – Response to Kathryn Alford’s blog on “Mission of the Church – Fuellenbach”

Kathryn is very correct in stating that “faith should be almost visible through our words and actions.” In fact, our faith and love for God should pour out of every pore of our body. Our lives should be an over-abundant testimony of God’s love in our lives and of our over-abundant faith in Him. I agree with St. Francis of Assisi –“Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.” The way we live our lives should tell our faith stories; if not, are we truly being different from the world that people will see the gift we have been given through Jesus Christ and want to know how they can get it? I pray that my life makes people ask what is different about me and how they can receive the gift: Jesus.

Week 10 – Maori “Jews” and a Resistant Reading of John 5.10-47 – Mary Huie-Jolly

“[S]ome Maori referred to themselves as ‘Jews’ rather than Christians,” states Huie-Jolly (Sugirtharajah, 224), because of the binarism of Jesus’ Sonship’s consistency with imperial domination. The Maori prefer to refer to themselves—as Israel did—as “‘the chosen people’” (Ibid., 231). I find this fascinating because Christians today view themselves as God’s chosen people, just as Israel did; however, we see no issue of Jesus’ Sonship being a binarism creating an “other” and yet it does, especially for those people who already feel oppressed by other people groups. How careful we must be as Christians not to come across as being superior or creating the binarism of “other”!

Week 10 – Exodus-Toward-Egypt: Filipino-Americans’ Struggle to Realize the Promised Land in America – Eleazar S. Fernandez

I think Fernandez chose a wonderful biblical narrative to illustrate Filipino-Americans’—as well as other minorities within the United States—struggles. Many of my international friends have come to study in the United States solely because it is “the land of opportunities”, and yet some of them feel like captives or the oppressed people—whether socio-economic, racial, or other discrimination solely because they are neither white nor American citizens. How can I—as a white American—truly identify with what they are going through? How can I aid them in dealing with the oppression they receive?

Week 10 – How Local Divine Powers were Suppressed: A Case of Mwari of the Shona – Dora R. Mbuwayesango

Even though the Christian missionaries meant well in referring to Mwari as the Shona name for our Christian God, Mwari—the Shona’s god—has such a deep meaning in different ways than the Christian understanding of God. Figuring out what language to use in the contextualization process would be very difficult because there’s a fine line of balance between A) wanting to contextualize Christianity into terms the people will understand more clearly while B) not taking away from their own culture and identity. This is something I still struggle with trying to comprehend. What would you do?

Week 10 – God at the Crossroads: A Postcolonial Reading of Sophia – Mayra Rivera

I enjoy how Rivera connects Sophia with the identity of her people, los atravesados–”‘the crossed’ [who are] [n]ot from here; not from there” (Sugirtharajah, 238).  I also truly enjoyed Rivera’s insight of Sophia being ideal and countering with the foreign or strange woman, the “other” as colonialistic (Ibid., 240).
On the other hand, I feel that many times Rivera switches Sophia to something she—Sophia—is not. For instance, Rivera replaces “the Word” with Sophia in John 1:1. Strong’s Concordance is very clear that in John 1:1-18 “the Word” is referring to the Son of God (James Strong, Grk. 152: #3056).